Fleetwood Mac-Part III of Fritz Series

Sara

As you may have guessed our tour didn't quite go as planned. Long story short after years of self restraint and keeping my temper in check, I fucked up. And that fuck up cost me the most precious possession I have. My heart. My baby girl. I keep hearing words like brain death, pull the plug, vegetable. But not Sara. My little girl isn't a vegetable. My little girl isn't brain dead. My little girl isn't going to need a machine to breath for her. Her kidneys aren't shutting down. Her lung didn't collapse. She's still alive and well and at home chasing Ginny and coloring, and drawing, and writing in her journal.

She's reading Jane Eyre, and Keats, and, Twain, and rolling her eyes at Nova for being too wiggly to listen while she reads a big book to him. My baby is alright. My baby is fine. I fucking hate myself. I hate my God damn temper.

Stevie isn't coping any better than me. She's been a huddle of tears for about a week and a half. I've been chain smoking, not eating, and staying up to all hours pacing. I'm supposed to be the strong one, once again. When it comes to Sara I'm not, I'm ashamed to admit it but if Nova or AJ were in the same position I might be a bit more together. My nerves hardened. But not Sara, if anything has softened my heart over the years it's my daughter. She's my light. She wasn't the first thing Stevie and I created from love, but she was the best.

This started about six weeks ago, after Christmas and the final leg of our North American Tour. We ended up in Mexico City and took a flight back to LA for two months of a break. It was in February, the kids were back in school and Jeff was back from basic training...

February 1981

"So I was surrounded by all this jungle, all I had was my ration pack a bowie knife and six feet of rope. It was a hundred degrees in the shade, the mosquitos were about an inch thick all over the place and out of nowhere this massive black bear just comes thundering out of the bush waving its claws at me like this Grrrrrrr!" all three of my children shriek and hide under their blankets at that part. Whatever much of this story is true I can't be sure, but at the very least army life has made my big brother one hell of an entertainer. At this time Greg raises his hand shifting my newborn niece, Sophia, to his opposite knee "Uhm, if I recall black bears aren't native to that region of California...also we don't have any jungle or swamps that I can remember"

Jeff looks down at his nieces and nephews, five in all including my three and Greg's two. "Oh...right this was another time. Uhm I was in a redwood forest and it was a grizzly bear!" Nova leans forward on his elbows absorbing every word like gospel. Swinging his own teddy bear AJ lays on his back, his toddler attention span kicking in . Sara's bundled in her multi-colored throw with her head in Stevie's lap and her feet in mine, staying perfectly still while her mother French braids her increasingly long hair.

Like she's in school she raises her hand, following Greg's example "Uncle Jeff, how come you were by yourself?" my brother's eyes light up. It's the perfect question to embellish the details of his story further.

"The rest of my platoon were still stuck trying to figure out their map, the objectives were too tough for them. Me, on the other hand, I was ahead of the whole pack. The enemies flag only a few cliques due north" I've never heard of a training exercise with so much peril and adventure, Stevie chuckles tucking one braid behind Sara's ear while she starts the other. I have a feeling Jeff got lost while the rest of the group were out looking for him and he wandered around for a few hours freaking out. That sounds more like my brother, than a bear whisperer.

It's a Friday night, Greg and Elise are up for the weekend to visit. It's a part of my effort to have more social interaction for Sara outside of her school friends. The teasing has stopped, but I can tell she misses her bigger circle of friends from the older kids. But, resolutely, because she never does anything halfway she's been avoiding them and staying with her old group. She hasn't mentioned Kit and she's focused more on her school work and her music than ever before.